Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 21-22, 2012

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:   

Lihue, Kauai –                     79  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –  82  (Record high temperature for this date – 86 / 1989) 
Kaneohe, Oahu –                 M
Molokai airport –                 77
Kahului airport, Maui –          81  
Kona airport –                    80
Hilo airport, Hawaii –           80

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 81
Hilo, Kauai – 73

Haleakala Crater –  37 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         41 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too…depending upon weather conditions. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is often not working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Gusty trades with windward showers increasing
   into the weekend…drier and less windy next week

As this weather map shows, we have a strong near 1041 millibar high pressure system to the north of the islands.  At the same time, we have a cold front extending far southwest from the center of its parent low, to the north of a low pressure system to the west of Kauai. Our winds will become stronger trade winds through the rest of the week.

The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions Wednesday evening:

22                 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
33                 Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
30                 Molokai – NE
33                 Kahoolawe – NE
30                 Kahului, Maui – NE
30                 Lanai – NE
35                 Upolu airport, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Wednesday evening.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture – it is not working at the moment. We can use this looping satellite image – it is not working at the moment. Checking out this looping radar image we see light to moderately heavy showers being carried along over the ocean by the strengthening trade winds…impacting the windward sides in many places. 

Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday afternoon:
 
0.20               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.50               Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.07               Molokai
0.01               Kahoolawe
1.00              Puu Kukui, Maui
0.41               Waiakea Uka, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  Our local winds will increase in strength into the weekend. As the winds have already increased over yesterday, and will strengthen through the next several days…small craft wind advisories are active across all coastal and channel waters around the state now. This advisory will likely remain in force through the rest of this week…if not right on into early next week.

As the stronger trade winds blow, the windward sides will turn more showery…with some of these showers being carried over into the leeward sides locally. An upper level trough of low pressure will edge near the islands Friday into Saturday, likely increasing our showers further then. The showers Friday and Saturday may become quite heavy, at least locally, as an upper level low pressure system will enhance them then. As we push into early next week, drier weather with somewhat lighter trade winds should return.

Here in Kula, Maui at 515m Wednesday evening, our skies were cloudy, although with high cirrus clouds around now too…with an air temperature of 67.1F degrees. As noted above, our winds will be picking up now, and persist well into the future. This is a classic response to the spring season here in the tropics, and not uncommon. Meanwhile, as the trade winds surge, they will carry moisture our way, especially along our north and east facing coasts and slopes. There will be some of these showers transported over into the leeward sides of the islands at times too…on these gusty trades. It appears that the Friday and Saturday time frame will have the best chance of seeing the most showers, and some of those will be locally heavy too. ~~~ I have a family emergency in Long Beach, California, and will be flying there early Thursday afternoon. I will write a few more words about this before I leave, and will back early Thursday morning to sign off for a time. In my absence however, the island forecasts will continue to be available, in the upper left hand corner of each page.  I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you're spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Scientists have found a large reduction in the amount of the coldest deep ocean water, called Antarctic Bottom Water, all around the Southern Ocean using data collected from 1980 to 2011. These findings, in a study now online, will likely stimulate new research on the causes of this change. Two oceanographers from NOAA and the University of Washington find that Antarctic Bottom Water has been disappearing at an average rate of about eight million metric tons per second over the past few decades, equivalent to about fifty times the average flow of the Mississippi River or about a quarter of the flow of the Gulf Stream in the Florida Straits.

“Because of its high density, Antarctic Bottom Water fills most of the deep ocean basins around the world, but we found that the amount of this water has been decreasing at a surprisingly fast rate over the last few decades,” said lead author Sarah Purkey, graduate student at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, Wash.

“In every oceanographic survey repeated around the Southern Ocean since about the 1980s, Antarctic Bottom Water has been shrinking at a similar mean rate, giving us confidence that this surprisingly large contraction is robust.” Antarctic Bottom Water is formed in a few distinct locations around Antarctica, where seawater is cooled by the overlying air and made saltier by ice formation.

The dense water then sinks to the sea floor and spreads northward, filling most of the deep ocean around the world as it slowly mixes with warmer waters above it. The world’s deep ocean currents play a critical role in transporting heat and carbon around the planet, thus regulating our climate.

While previous studies have shown that the bottom water has been warming and freshening over the past few decades, these new results suggest that significantly less of this bottom water has been formed during that time than in previous decades.

“We are not sure if the rate of bottom water reduction we have found is part of a long-term trend or a cycle,” said co-author Gregory C. Johnson, Ph.D., an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

“We need to continue to measure the full depth of the oceans, including these deep ocean waters, to assess the role and significance that these reported changes and others like them play in the Earth’s climate.”

Changes in the temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and dissolved carbon dioxide of this prominent water mass have important ramifications for Earth’s climate, including contributions to sea level rise and the rate of Earth’s heat uptake.

“People often focus on fluctuations of currents in the North Atlantic Ocean as an indicator of climate change, but the Southern Ocean has undergone some very large changes over the past few decades and also plays a large role in shaping our climate,” said Johnson.

The data used in this study are highly accurate temperature data repeated at roughly 10-year intervals by an international program of repeated ship-based oceanographic surveys.

Within the U.S., the collection of these data has been a collaborative effort of governmental laboratory and university scientists, funded primarily by NOAA and the National Science Foundation. However, much of the data used in this study were measured by international colleagues.

“Collection of these data involves 12-hour days, seven days a week, of painstaking, repetitive work at sea, often for weeks on end with no sight of land. We are grateful for the hard work of all those who helped in this effort,” said Purkey.

Interesting2: A new World Bank study on illegal logging reports that a football field of forest is clear-cut every two seconds around the globe and the problem is now a "global epidemic." The report estimates that illegal logging accounts for as much as 90% of all timber felled each year, generating between $10 to $15 billion.

The report says the logging is mostly controlled by organized crime, and ill-gotten gains are used to pay corrupt government officials at all levels to turn a blind eye. "Forestry's criminal justice system is broken. Despite compelling data and evidence showing that illegal logging is a worldwide epidemic, most forest crimes go undetected, unreported, or are ignored," says the 56-page report released Tuesday.

"All too often, investigations—in the rare event that they do take place—are amateurish and inconclusive." A four-year study in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines — four forest-rich countries — found that the probability of illegal loggers being penalized is less than 0.1% "We need to fight organized crime in illegal logging the way we go after gangsters selling drugs or racketeering," says Jean Pesme, Manager of the World Bank Financial Market Integrity team that helps countries combat illicit financial flows.

Estimates of financial losses from illegal logging don't consider "the enormous environmental, economic and societal costs— biodiversity threats, increased carbon emissions and undermined livelihoods of rural peoples," the report says.

"Large-scale illegal operations are carried out by sophisticated criminal networks, and law enforcement actions need to be focused on the 'masterminds' behind these networks—and the high-level corrupt officials who enable and protect them," the report says. "Pursuing these important targets through the criminal justice system will require creativity and a clear focus on those criminal justice rules and procedures that prove most effective."